You Got Some ‘Splaining To Do: About Day Of The Dead
2 November 2007, 9:00 AM. By Guanabee Staff
So we’ve been chatting here at Guanabee headquarters about the gradual rise in popularity of Day of the Dead in the States. Some of us who grew up spitting distance from Mexico never heard of it until we moved further into the United States to bigger cities with gringos. So we did some research and found at least one article that says what we suspected:
Dia de los Muertos is not celebrated everywhere in Mexico, said Eva Ramirez, a Spanish professor at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks.
Ramirez never celebrated Dia de los Muertos when she grew up in Jalisco, Mexico, and didn’t know anyone who did. About two years ago, however, Ramirez returned and saw a Dia de los Muertos exhibit displayed at the town’s cultural center. With the Internet and international travel, she said, more people are learning about the traditions and art associated with the Mexican ritual.
And another article says the more flashy or marketable stuff so popular here in the states is, indeed a southern Mexican thing:
The small platform called the “altar de muertos,” dedicated to the memory of a departed loved one, is of indigenous origin, although Catholicized. This is a custom in southern Mexico, but was never a custom in the north of the country.
Mexico is a diverse country and everybody doesn’t observe the Day of the Dead in the exact same manner.
It might be more correct to refer to the Day of the Dead not as a single custom, but a complex of diverse customs, varying greatly among the regions and families of the country.
For some Mexicans, the Day of the Dead differs little from the American Memorial Day, in which people visit a cemetery to adorn the graves of departed family members.
What about you? Did you grow up celebrating Dia de los Muertos with altars and masks? And if so, does your town have gringos in it? Let us know.
Day of the dead finds new life [Ventura County Star]
Do Mexicans Celebrate Halloween and the Day of the Dead? [Mexidata]
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Our Chihuahua/Coahuila family were not calaca loving brujos. But abuelito sure as hell made some great costumes. He LOVED Haloween.
My intro to Dia de los Muertos was from my ninth grade drawing teacher of ambiguous ethnicity who could pass for anybody (other than white in the L.A. suburb I grew up in). Ms. Hassan, had the most southern-fried soul-food accent in L.A. It was the best mental seed drop I even had when I was in High School, and about the only good I ever got out of that class.
My family is from Jalisco (my mom is Alteña, in fact), and they never celebrated Dia de los Muertos like that. My grandparents would probably have considered it backwards, macabre and pagan to glorify death like that and probably would have just gone to church or to visit their dead. My parents aren’t that opposed to it, mainly because they live in the U.S. and they have friends at church that do all the skull stuff.
Personally, I think it’s awesome.
I’m from Veracruz, and we always made an altar de muertos at my elementary and high school. I think some years we even had competitions between grades to see who made the best altar, it was awesome.
I don’t remember ever going to church or a cemetery, but we always had delicious pan de muerto with delicious creamy chocolate, sometimes even tamales, and sugar skulls. I never knew northern Mexico didn’t celebrate el Dia de los Muertos.
My family is from Jalisco and I know they celebrate dia de los muertos. They don’t do the actual altar. They take the items to the cemetery or the tomb stone of the person they want to celebrate. So maybe its just a little different.
my parents (born and raised here) wanted nothing to do with it, it wasn’t until i moved out their house that i came to embrace all kinds of customs relating to my heritage. now i teach it to spread the word far and wide to educate others what it is all about.
sad to say, but my family really didn’t celebrate dia de los muertos in the traditional Oingo Boingo way. ours was more of a sedate and reflective journey to the cemetary to visit the dead relatives of yore.
i do enjoy the morbid fascination with it all though. which made me appreciate things like Alarma! and Larry King, for some unknown reason.
Wow, what a coincidence… i grew up in thousand oaks, and it is one of the oddest places to grow up latino. its a predominantly white suburban upper-middle/high class community. if you look it up its one of the safest cities to live in the US with one of the smallest crime rates in the nation, even though its only 40 miles north of Los Angeles.
My family was originally from Zacatecas Mexico, and we actually lived there for a few yeard when i was in elementary school, and we never celebrated day of the dead in Mex or in TO.
It wasn’t until me and my brother and sisters started taking chicano studies classes in college that we started to celebrate/acknowledge dia de los muertos.